Smash Up

Who would win, Pirates or Ninjas? What about Plants or Zombies? Many have pondered these battles, no one has had a satisfactory answer. Now what if we smashed these battling factions together, who would win if they were Plant Ninja and Zombie Pirates fighting. Now you can play out these battles and find an answer.

The gameplay:

The “shufflebuilding” game Smash Up starts with a simple premise: Take the twenty-card decks of two factions, shuffle them into a forty-card deck, then compete to smash more Bases than your opponents! Each faction brings a different game mechanism into play – pirates move cards, zombies bring cards back from the discard pile, dinosaurs have huge power – and every combination of factions brings a different play experience.

During play, Base cards (each with their own difficulties and abilities) are in play. You attempt to have the most power on the Base from your minions when the Base is smashed. Sounds easy? How easy is it when an opponent’s Alien-Ninja decides to Beam Up your minions to other Bases – flat out Assassinate them? What about when the Pirate-Dinosaur player Full Sails in and releases King Rex to stomp your minions into the ground, or when the Wizard-Zombies use their Mystic Power to create an Outbreak, suddenly flooding minions onto the Base from the discard pile? Or what if you faced a Zombie-Dinosaur player instead and he created an Outbreak of massive beasts all at once?!?

When a Base is smashed, each player in first, second and third place scores points. Fourth place? Sorry you wasted your minions dude.

With eight different factions in the base game, and a total of 17 factions with all the expansions. Smash Up includes thousands of possible combinations to try. Pirate-Aliens play different than Ninja-Aliens, for instance. Which will you use to smash up your opponents?

Did I mention the dinosaurs have laser beams, because they do…

The review:

I have owned Smash Up for some 2 years and can honestly say I’ve never finished a game. That isn’t to say I dislike the game, but my gaming groups never finish a game. It’s hilarious a concept for a game. We jokingly call it Internet argument the card game.